Day: August 18, 2014

The IKB Ensemble is named for International Klein Blue, a kind of synthetic ultramarine blue patented in 1961 by French painter Yves Klein, which he used in nearly 200 monochromatic paintings. Klein was attracted to the color because he saw it as largely bereft of associations outside of sky and sea, and thus able to withdraw from the viewer into a kind of immateriality or intangibility. It seems fitting then that the ensemble creating this subtly developing long piece, recorded in Lisbon in February 2014, should take its inspiration from Klein’s color.

Although IKB is a large ensemble—it’s composed of thirteen members playing strings, reeds, brass, percussion, electronics and even voice and accordion—it steps very lightly. Much of its activity is spent exploring timbre outside of pitch—key clicks, bowed muted strings, unvoiced air notes, wordless vocalizations—at low volume. When a clearly sounded tone asserts itself in the mix, as it does on occasion, the effect is almost startling. Even as it builds slowly and almost unperceptibly to a crescendo, the music is meditative in the way that looking at a monochromatic painting can be meditative.

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Last March, in a conference room at the former Peabody Hotel, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola stood up to address a small gathering of mostly out-of-town academics. He cleared his throat, thanked everyone for coming. To the mayor’s immediate left was seated Pharoah Sanders, the pioneering avant-garde saxophonist who Ornette Coleman, no amateur, once called “probably the best tenor player in the world.” The speech went on for a few more minutes and ended with the mayor proclaiming that day, March 8, “Pharoah Sanders Day here in the city of Little Rock.”

Ken Vandermark is a brilliant Jazz musician who has been awarded the MacCarthur Genius Fellowship for composing. He joins CWMD for a very impassioned conversation about how artists are viewed in America, the challenge of pushing yourself to say something new each night on stage, the differential of what creative people are trying to accomplish and what they achieve and the how society judges work based on worth. Vandermark is a force and anyone creative or interested in art and music should not miss the episode. Anyone who is creative or interested in creativity should listen to this episode.